In daily life, during spring and summer, people generally avoid wearing yellow clothing, because such clothes tend to attract many small insects. Some of these insects may even bite, causing itching and discomfort. This phenomenon revealed that many insects have a clear color preference, especially for yellow. Essentially, this is still a form of phototaxis, but it differs from the lamp-based technologies we discussed earlier.
Taking advantage of this preference, humans creatively invented the sticky trap. The specific color on the board attracts pests, and then the insects become trapped by the adhesive on the board. In the 1980s, sticky traps were first commercialized and applied on a large scale in Japan, officially becoming an important tool for agricultural pest monitoring and control.
With the promotion of healthy living concepts, people are paying increasing attention to the issue of pesticide residues in agricultural products. Because sticky traps work through physical trapping, they perfectly avoid this problem. Their application in agricultural pest control has since experienced explosive growth, with the market expanding rapidly and showing immense potential.
Nowadays, sticky traps come in an extremely wide variety of colors and feature diverse materials. Many are even integrated with technologies such as pheromones and the Internet of Things (IoT). Combining functions including pest monitoring, forecasting, and mass trapping, they have become an indispensable part of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) systems.
In the future, we believe this simple board will integrate more new technologies and become an even smarter, more precise, and indispensable component of integrated pest management systems.
